April 1 (Bloomberg) -- Just over 7 million people enrolled
for insurance coverage under Obamacare after a last-minute rush
to sign up by yesterday’s deadline, White House press secretary
Jay Carney said.

The enrollment of 7.04 million people came after a
“remarkable surge” in the final day of the open-enrollment
period, which ended at midnight, Carney said. The figure doesn’t
include enrollments through separate state exchanges or people
who started the process and weren’t able to finish because of
technical difficulties.

“It’s fair to say we surpassed everyone’s expectations,”
Carney said at a White House briefing today.

He said the government doesn’t yet have a breakdown on the
enrollees. President Barack Obama, who was told the figure this
morning, is scheduled to deliver remarks on his signature
health-care law at 4:15 p.m. Washington time.

Seven million enrollees matches the initial estimates for
insurance sign-ups under the law. The Congressional Budget
Office in February projected that 6 million people would enroll,
after stumbles getting the federal website for enrollment up and
running. The law has been under attack by Republicans, who are
making dissatisfaction with Obamacare a central part of the
congressional campaign for November’s elections.

Democrats ‘Pleased’

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, speaking at the White
House after meeting with Obama, said Democrats “are very
pleased with the ACA results,” and that the party’s candidates
won’t be running away from the issue.

“Overwhelmingly, our members are out there on the
offensive on this,” the California Democrat said.

A member of the House Republican leadership said before the
announcement that Obamacare will still be an issue in the
November elections.

“I don’t think the issue goes away at all,” U.S.
Representative Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican, said on MSNBC.
“I don’t see a lot of Democratic enthusiasm.”

There were more than 4.8 million visits to HealthCare.gov
yesterday, the end of the first open enrollment period,
according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a
unit of the Department of Health and Human Services. That
exceeded the previous high of 1.8 million on Dec. 23.

Coverage Quality

Attention now will turn to the quality of coverage
Obamacare enrollees receive, their access to medical services,
and insurer preparations for 2015. Already, Indianapolis-based
WellPoint Inc., the largest exchange insurer, has warned it may
propose “double-digit plus” premium increases for the next
enrollment period, which begins in November. Insurers must
quickly assess the medical demands of their new customers before
filing rates at the end of May.

Determining the success of the system may take a while,
according to the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO, which
estimates that 45 million Americans will be uninsured this year
despite the law, says that number will only shrink as far as 31
million by 2024, the 11th year of expanded coverage.

The percentage of uninsured nonetheless has fallen since
the law was passed in 2010, according to a Gallup Poll survey.
In the first quarter of 2014, the rate fell to 15.9 percent, its
lowest quarterly level since 2008.